136 EXTRAORDINARY RUN. 



accident, as the hounds broke away, and the men were 

 not mounted to go with them, and consequently could 

 not stop them. They found at five o'clock in the 

 morning at the Bull and Butcher wood, which is 

 situated on the edge of the largest woodlands in the 

 county, six miles from Coventry, on the Oxford road, 

 and killed their fox close to Crick in Northamptonshire, 

 fifteen miles from point to point ; but as the line taken 

 was circuitous, it Avas at least twenty miles. The pace 

 was tremendous ; and no one who started with the 

 hounds was up at the finish, except William Boxal, 

 who was then the first whipper. There were nearly 

 fifty couples of hounds out, seventeen and-a-half 

 couples of which were of that year's entry, and had 

 only been out four times before that day. It proved 

 an old barren bitch fox. The country traversed for 

 the last eight miles, till within two of the death, was 

 what is known as the Dunchurch country. In those 

 days there were no covers in that neighbourhood as at 

 the present time ; Cooke's gorse, Hill Morton gorse, 

 and Bunker's Hill, were then not even planted, or a 

 fox would hardly have held on so straight without 

 touching some of them. She proved herself a real 

 out and outer, and although of the feminine gender, 

 she was no doubt 



'' A traveller, stranger, stout, gallant and shy, 

 With her earths ten miles off, and those earths in her eye, 

 She was off like a shot at the sound of the horn, 

 As the stars disappear at the pale peep of morn." 



